To Live

The Next Reel Film Podcast · Jun 4, 2026 · 57m · transcript

Zhang Yimou's "To Live" is the most personal film he ever made—a 1994 historical epic that strips away his signature visual spectacle to follow one Chinese family across four decades of civil war, forced labor campaigns, and cultural upheaval. Ge You plays Xu Fugui, a gambler whose recklessness costs his family everything; Gong Li plays Jiazhen, his wife, whose capacity for endurance and eventual forgiveness gives the film its moral center; and Jiang Wu is Wan Erxi, their son-in-law, who arrives as a stranger and becomes the warmth the story needs. Pete Wright and Andy Nelson track the film's…